At Mobile World Congress Americas there is connected car news in the wireless space about 5G and other technologies from Qualcomm, Nokia, GSMA, AT&T and Actility.

GSMA Study Shows 5G by 2019

North America leads the world in 4G and smartphone adoption and is expected to migrate rapidly to 5G networks and services, according to a new GSMA study. By 2025, around half of the region’s connections are expected to be running on 5G, a considerably greater share than other key 5G global regions. In the US, fixed wireless will be the initial use case for early 5G deployments, with full standardized 5G services expected to follow in 2019.

Qualcomm & Nokia 5G Testing

Qualcomm and Nokia announced plans to conduct interoperability testing and over-the-air field trials based on the 5G New Radio (NR) Release-15 specifications being developed by 3GPP. The testing and trials intend to drive the mobile ecosystem toward rapid validation and commercialization of 5G NR technologies at scale, enabling timely commercial network launches in 2019 based on 3GPP standard compliant 5G NR infrastructure and devices.

There is clear and growing industry interest for 5G mobility applications to meet increasing mobile broadband needs and emerging use case requirements globally. A recent 5G consumer survey conducted by Qualcomm Technologies revealed that 48% of the respondents are likely to purchase a smartphone that supports 5G when available Furthermore, 5G was the top feature that consumers were willing to pay more for in their next mobile device.

In the testing and trials, the companies will showcase 5G NR technologies to efficiently achieve multi-gigabit per second data rates at latencies as low as 1-millisecond and significantly better reliability than today’s network, amongst other capabilities. These technologies will be critical to meeting the increasing connectivity requirements for emerging consumer mobile broadband experiences such as streaming high-fidelity video, immersive virtual/augmented reality, and connected cloud computing, as well as enabling new high-reliability, low-latency services for use cases such as autonomous vehicles, drones and industrial equipment.

The testing and trials will utilize the Nokia 5G FIRST solution, incorporating the Nokia AirScale base station transmitting over the 5G NR radio interface to the device prototype from Qualcomm Technologies. The companies will test end-to-end applications over-the-air between the base station and the device to simulate real-world scenarios across a broad set of 5G NR use cases and deployment scenarios. The testing will include 5G NR operation in sub-6 GHz spectrum bands such as 3.5 GHz and 4.5 GHz, as well as millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum bands such as 28 GHz and 39 GHz, to trial the 5G NR unified design across diverse spectrum bands.

The interoperability testing, which will start in the second half of 2017, are intended to track closely with the first 3GPP 5G NR specification that will be part of Release 15. The Companies are also collaborating with network operators to conduct 5G NR over-the-air field trials starting in 2018 across various regions including China, Europe, Japan, and the USA. Tracking the 3GPP specification is important because it promotes adherence and validation with the global 5G standard, accelerating the time to standard-compliant devices and infrastructure. It will also ensure forward compatibility to future 3GPP 5G NR releases.

Mo’ Mobikes from Qualcomm & AT&T

AT&T’s 4G LTE connectivity combined with Qualcomm Technologies’ LTE IoT modems and Mobike’s smartphone app will let users easily locate, unlock, and securely pay for the nearest Mobike. At the end of their ride, users will be able to return the bike to a designated “Mobike Preferred Location” or any regular bike parking area.

Mobike currently manages more than 7 million smart bikes across 160-plus cities globally.

These bikes feature Mobike’s smart lock. This is enabled by the Qualcomm® MDM9206 global multimode LTE IoT modem which supports extended battery life, deeper coverage for connectivity in challenging conditions and mobile IoT applications. Since the entire fleet is GPS-enabled, Mobike can get bikes to the locations where they are needed most.

Erriccson Verizon Qualcomm & Federated Wireless 5G

Ericcson at Mobile World Congress America noes that the journey to a 5G world has already started. Companies and industries have started preparing by exploring IoT, transforming their business models and investigating the potential of 5G. 5G will give us unreal speed and very real opportunity. It will make our networks incredibly powerful. And it will unleash digital transformation that will redefine industries and ecosystems.

Ericsson and its partners are helping business grow today while pushing 5G technology and business use cases forward in 5G.

Verizon’s iE network will deliver the ultra-low latency innovations of autonomous vehicles, Smart Cities, AI and more. The iE network means unmatched speed, power and hyperintelligence at the network edge.

LTE on CBRS: Verizon, Ericsson, Qualcomm and Federated Wireless demonstrates the first use of CBRS band 48 spectrum for LTE with carrier aggregation using a true band 48 radio in the Ericsson Radio Dot System, Qualcomm MTP, Federated Wireless Spectrum Access System (SAS) and domain proxy in the Ericsson Network Manager. This group was the first to use this newly authorized spectrum an innovative spectrum sharing scheme, and will allow cellular systems to tap into 150 MHz of new spectrum in buildings and small cell clusters. It showcases the possibility of both operator mobile broadband and private LTE use cases on the same radio.

Using three carrier aggregation, they achieved another industry first with more than 1 Gbps speeds on o 4G LTE network.

Sierra Wireless, provider of fully integrated device-to-cloud solutions for the Internet of Things (IoT), today announced that its industry-leading AirLink® MP70 LTE-Advanced vehicle routers now support the most advanced, integrated vehicle telemetry, inertial navigation (dead reckoning), and driver behavior features to improve fleet operations and vehicle maintenance.

The MP70 router is optimized for the world’s most demanding wireless applications, including public safety, field services and transit. The MP70 provides a high-performance vehicle networking solution to connect multiple high-bandwidth applications in and around the vehicle, while also providing IT departments with the flexibility to manage mobile assets in the cloud or in the enterprise data center using Sierra Wireless AirLink Network Management solutions.

Sierra Wireless’ AirLink solution, automakers dont have to invest an extra $200 – $400 per vehicle in separate systems to provide vehicle telemetry, inertial navigation and driver behavior reporting. It’s all supported on the router, and the data is instantly accessible in the management system.

With the upcoming software release (ALEOS 4.9.0), the MP70 will support an integrated vehicle bus interface using a direct cable connection (OBD-II and J1939), so customers no longer need to buy external dongles or scanners to monitor vehicle health. The new release also enables built-in sensors (accelerometer and gyroscope) for inertial navigation to provide precise geo-location capabilities, even in urban canyons and underground garages where satellites can’t be seen. The built-in sensors also provide the ability to monitor driver behavior, including harsh acceleration and braking.

The MP70 seamlessly integrates out of the box with the AirLink Mobility Manager (AMM)—an end-to-end network management solution that enables instant network insight and control for centralized and remote management, monitoring and configuration. AMM is available as a cloud service or as an on-premise solution. With the release of AMM 2.16 on Sept. 15, 2017, AMM now integrates telemetry features across the AirLink in-vehicle product line.

The AirLink MP70 with support for vehicle telemetry, inertial navigation and driver behavior features is commercially available through Sierra Wireless’ authorized channel partners worldwide.

Actility LPWAN Asset Tracking

Actility, the industry leader in Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) and IoT location solutions, and machineQ, Comcast’s IoT network service and platform, are demonstrating an asset tracking solution at Mobile World Congress Americas (MWCA) in San Francisco. Connecting Abeeway Master Tracker hardware to Actility’s ThingPark IoT software platform using the machineQ LoRaWAN network in San Francisco, the demonstration monitors the location of a number of Comcast’s XFINITY™ service vehicles in near real time.

The demonstration solution, which is on show at Actility’s booth N.701 at MWCA, sees Abeeway Master Trackers, operating on the 915 MHz ISM band frequency required for the US market, installed in five of Comcast’s XFINITY service vehicles in the North Bay area of San Francisco. Actility works with machineQ, and the solution utilizes the machineQ network deployed in the Bay Area region.

The tracking solution is highly flexible, thanks to LoRaWAN’s bidirectional communication capabilities. For example, the behavior of the trackers can be adjusted depending on the status of the vehicle, sending precise location data every minute when the vehicles are moving, but only once an hour if the vehicle is stationary and parked in a depot. The Abeeway Master Tracker is a self-contained industrial product with an internal battery giving it a field life of up to several years, so tracking is not dependent on power from the vehicle being available. The tracker also uses Actility’s innovative “Low-Power GPS” technology specifically optimized for LoRaWAN, which uses fewer satellites and reduces the GPS lock time to a few seconds. The power required for both signal acquisition and processing is reduced: this combination results in a dramatic increase in battery life, by an order of magnitude versus existing GPS location technology. Using this low-power GPS, the trackers will be able to achieve an overall location accuracy of within 5 meters throughout the 5-day duration of the trial deployment.